Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife: 1 Read online

  before you answer.

  I am binding barbells to my boots

  for the stroll to the lightless floor.

  Change in one fist.

  A zip-lock bag of air in the other…

  I stand at the shore and stomp on the sand 5 times.

  Blind bottlenose dolphins arrive—

  guide me in slow like secret service.

  They had done this before.

  30 feet down

  My head feels like it will explode

  as it did whenever I saw a typewriter.

  I dwell on the idea of who started the fires in hell.

  Who built such a place?

  I understand that it wasn’t the devil.

  My arms lift unto him.

  There are things we don’t talk about

  that can only be talked about on this payphone.

  Now in front of me:

  The damage in our foreheads—

  The hands cut off for stealing ideas—

  The hearts donated to lost and found and lost—

  The empty,

  like the way you kissed me goodnight

  after your second abortion.

  Love, your phone is ringing.

  HOW TO FEEL

  I find myself screaming out loud in futility at the television, like a guy watching sports telling the coach what to do. The only difference is I am watching the news or things like this.

  ‘It’s not looking too good, but he is alive.’

  Kid is bleeding all over doctors.

  A family is crying on a reality show called Shock Trauma.

  Son has been in a car wreck.

  Disconnected his head

  from his spine.

  After a commercial break, Dr. Cooper meets with the family.

  ‘It’s not looking too good, but he is alive.’

  Dad says ‘Thank you for your candor. He…He’s very important to us…’

  and breaks down.

  The doctor says ‘I understand’ and leaves.

  The camera stays for the weeping.

  No one tells the camera to turn off.

  My leg hits the remote.

  The next channel has a beautiful woman offering me something.

  The perfection said to me

  ‘What do you want?’

  I said I wanted what all guys want:

  to smack the beauty back into you

  with a light bulb revolver,

  to call down fire from the holy spirit

  and watch you incinerate in a cheap party gown,

  to rip you in two and make you notice

  how close we are to death when sleeping,

  to awaken that four-letter beast

  roaring like a fistfight in your throat

  that unsleeps the chaos inside you.

  I want you to become one of us,

  a clumsy feisty anti-zombie,

  hungry for that famous arrow,

  pounding at confusing walls

  like a foreigner at the gates, ya know?

  A boy was bleeding on another channel.

  I had forgotten all about him.

  TO THE LIGHTNING TEACHERS

  All this you are holding is because someone said something encouraging to me once.

  PEARLS, PORCUPINES, PENNIES

  To the teacher that said

  ‘The world is your oyster…’

  These poems are the pearls

  I spit upon your plate.

  To the other teachers,

  prepare your flints.

  Speak with the hum of Fahrenheit

  in your hearts.

  Teach them to be artists.

  Teach them that artists make people aware

  of what they already know

  and really know

  what they themselves think they don’t know.

  Teach the champions the necessity of losing

  for the sake of personality.

  If the kids are hard to reach

  wearing jackets made of knives,

  maybe it’s time that we

  dressed up like porcupines

  to show there’s a bit of them

  still poking inside us.

  Hey you prickly mother!

  The kid under your bed is dying every day.

  Dying to play in the mud, dying to snap all your friggin’ pencils,

  dying to understand fireflies in the tree line.

  Go get them, teachers.

  We should all be lighting kids on fire

  unless you are a literalist,

  or are from Salem.

  Bring them an astral storm of ideas.

  Lightning strikes the tree—

  the tree is budding with pinecones—

  the pinecones explode—

  the seed spreads across the forest—

  new trees are born.

  Bring them the lightning.

  Bring them the sauce.

  I was a bag of dirty pennies from the year 73

  and a teacher, Mrs. Shin, rolled me around in hot sauce till I was clean.

  She knew I wasn’t the Ivy League type, but she still brought ignition.

  “Oh, you all went to the school of business—

  I went to the school of none of your business.

  I’m different.”

  She taught me that the word is dangerous.

  It’s good to look a dream in the eyeball and not look away.

  It’s good to have a voice that can speak the language of resuscitation.

  It’s good to be beat down like the sun to prove you can rise.

  The future is our youth dressed as roman candles

  ready to burst open the gray evening sky.

  12 pens in a bandolier!

  A vending machine on campus full of envelopes

  addressed to the White House!

  A megaphone inside each lunch pail!

  Tell kids everywhere—

  The world is your underwear.

  It’s time you changed it.

  BLOOD TEST

  Where do you go when you go to your head world?

  My quiet head scares the crap outta me most nights.

  At 10:35pm I got real quiet inside

  like you said I should.

  I shook like a dog in a cage,

  trying to run from the sound of fireworks.

  Hungry for the language that could make you know this.

  Terribles were forming in the place where the tongue

  grows out of the neck.

  I went inside.

  It sounded like tunnels exploding.

  I’m not sure if I came out.

  HOT FOR SORROW

  This is my favorite ballad. In Munich, I met the kids from a mesmerizing group called Broken Social Scene. I asked if they would let me use their music when I do this out loud. They are gracious people and they are Canadian. The poetic terrorism guys use lines from this one when tagging up places. God bless ‘em.

  When the police helicopters showed up

  I grabbed onto the skid

  and they flew me cross town

  to your house.

  I watched you through the glass as you slept

  like jewelry in a coffin.

  I screamed out

  “Hey!

  I don’t want to be the best lover you’ve ever had

  I just want to be your favorite.”

  File me under hot for sorrow.

  When I couldn’t find your picture, I ate unwanted videotape and dreamt.

  When you appeared, soft-focused,

  outlined in lasers,

  embarrassed of your little T-Rex arms and seaweed hair,

  we danced on the ceiling like Lionel Richie

  until it was time to walk you home

  from naked class.

  This crosseyed sniper

  misses you so much.

  The heavy solo night music

  tells me what is buried beneath our city:

  Ambulances hooke
d on one ballad—

  A sky turning red over its opponents.

  Night melodies of helicopter switchblades

  slice through this city.

  The noise tells me there is still crime down there.

  5000 air machines cannot stop crime.

  5000 searchlights cannot stop crime.

  5000 police fully moustached, with a John Wayne box-set,

  and our names on every baton

  cannot stop crime.

  I now know that what I feel for you is crime.

  This is why I like the sound of police choppers:

  not because it makes me feel safe and watched over

  but rather because it is the music of war,

  and tonight

  they were playing our war.

  ARMSTRONG

  This poem became a song. I love telescopes. I never know what I’m looking at, but I could stare all night and imagine scenes happening 14 billion light years away.

  For Mike Mcgee

  The night the moon cracked open

  A voice came from within.

  The moon turned to the astronaut

  and said to him

  ‘Please stay. Please stay.’

  The astronaut looked

  back at the moon

  said “I’d love to stay

  but I can’t stay with you

  I am sorry to report

  that I must leave.

  For when I’m here

  with you

  I cannot breathe.”

  MEDUSA OBLONGATA

  Get mad on paper. Then become human. Toss this in the revenge pile.

  I wished for you like old women wished they would’ve perished first.

  Every kiss was a dead language.

  Every kiss was a chance to spit in your mouth.

  Now you let your skirt fall like an empire.

  Lead his tongue into the Nile.

  Taste the meat around his teeth.

  Promote his hands from your jowls to your breasts.

  As he beats the snakes out of you—

  Your spot turns to soup.

  Drown him in this month’s blood.

  No matter how hard you drill,

  Brother, you will not find oil.

  Feel her sex go tepid.

  Non-seduced spasmo-cadavers.

  Pretend I no longer dwell in you.

  I told you I’d return.

  I am in his medicated thrust.

  I am in his wallet as it buys your legs into the air.

  I am his hiss crawling across your tonsils.

  Call it a night.

  Call it what it is.

  When I said you were remarkable

  I said real marketable.

  Some churches are abandoned

  but can’t be torn down.

  You are smoke.

  COME ALIVE

  Some days I feel so damn good, I want to take you with me.

  COME ALIVE MR. TRUFALUMP

  Citizens of Narnia:

  I must admit

  I was a reluctant candidate for Mayor.

  I have shaken the hands and hooves of many

  through out this great land

  And I must admit

  for many, the beat inside has died.

  A great sorrow overwhelms me

  for even the drums in my chest

  are growing quieter each day.

  When did we become a library of children,

  shelved like great novels

  no one had time to read?

  As Mayor of Narnia

  I declare that this day must be the day we come alive.

  I will declare a day for dipping our hands in butter

  so we can practice letting go of what we were

  and watch our hands emerge as telephones

  so we can know our true calling.

  Brrrrrng. It’s for you. It’s the future!

  As Mayor of Narnia,

  I will declare a day of common sense

  on behalf of waiters everywhere.

  If you can’t tip 15-20%

  then you don’t get to go out to eat.

  As Mayor of Narnia

  I declare a day for talking to the trees.

  What are they saying? They’re saying ‘Climb me,

  carve your future lover’s initials into my spine,

  sacrifice me for your books.

  Every book, every page is my blood. I give this to you.

  If it’s a war for the lands of imagination, I am ready to die.’

  They’re saying,

  Go ahead-get young as your brain thinks you are on this day.

  Invite snow angels to a bonfire

  and give them s’more-flavored popsicles.

  Buy cereal with the worst nutritional value

  but the biggest prize.

  Go meet your prize.

  Sing and misplace your keys.

  See yourself dressing as a bull, waiting in Spanish arenas,

  armed with a journal and some pointy horns

  rising from all fours

  chasing matadors

  and screaming,

  ‘Chapter 1! I was born for this! Now how do you like it, Sucka!

  We’re gonna fly kites in reverse

  with the sail planted firmly in the soil

  and our bodies on a string

  sculpting clouds into the faces of people we miss.

  We’re gonna make thank-you cards

  and rest them on soldiers’ graves.

  We’re gonna raise a hand

  in the back of the world classroom

  and the answer we come up with

  is to pull the night down

  stare stars in the face

  and reclaim lost wishes.

  We’re gonna capture the details.

  We’re gonna turn off the machines.

  We are not the dishes we pass.

  We are the passion we dish.

  If you’ve been away from Narnia for a while, welcome back.

  The kingdom is outside.

  The kingdom is inside.

  Today is the day we come alive.

  from UNAPOLOGETICS

  THE LABRADOR IS POSED IN THE FREEZER

  Linda could not look the panting German Shepherd in the face.

  It was shaking like a young actor.

  Dogs shake at the veterinarian not because they are scared to die, but because they are scared to leave their master. Even if it’s just a check-up, dogs smell death as well as they smell fear and for Zinger, the pink smell had become strong.

  Small room with doctor.

  Technician enters with guest. Customer folds her lips back into her mouth and clutches her car keys, sets her purse upon the hairy, scratched tile.

  Linda the technician holds the animal in the aggressive posture, pinned like a Greco champion.

  Shove forearm along back. Headlock. Hold down back legs with left hand. Do not look the dog in the face. Customer is crying like she is drowning. Shaking her head at this scene she never imagined.

  Dog is pinned on counter atop of green beach towel ‘cause of shit and piss.

  “Would you like to say something, Ma’m?”

  “Oh God. Jesus. Jesus Christ. Baby, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t…Aw jeez. I just couldn’t afford the surgery. Maybe…a…took a double shift or more hours so…so…I could…Jesus Christ.”

  “Ma’m?”

  Breathing, breathing, house-key-hitting-car-key sounds. The dog is trying to lunge but is too old to overpower Linda. The woman stands up, hand on hip and taps her foot nervously, takes a deep breath as if to ready herself for a blow to the ribs, touches the dog on the forehead and said in a soft collected tone:

  “O.K.”

  Linda the technician can’t help but look towards the back of the head of the Shepherd. Its face tilts toward the owner. There is a whimper and its sharp ears perk up. Not to say help me. Not to say I’m scared. It says:

  “Why? Why?”
r />   Linda sees the Shepherd’s eyes. Linda cries and buries her face in the fabric softener smell of her lab coat.

  The customer repeats “O.K.” and the stops fidgeting.

  Still panting with its tongue out.

  The pink death is inserted into the artery near the leg. It’s so efficient, seconds.

  The Shepherd is gone. There is piss.

  Ten minutes alone are granted and the woman, the customer, falls over the shell of her animal.

  In the hallway outside the small room, Dr. Matzko turns to Linda.

  “You cry every time now.”

  “I can’t help but look, doctor. I’m sorry. The eyes are getting me lately.”

  “The eyes of Zinger or the eyes of Mrs. Walters?”

  “I go in there feeling strong as an ox. Then something happens where I just feel so much for these animals, I imagine hanging onto that moment. Once they’re gone, I can treat their carcasses like sleeping bags and it doesn’t faze me.

  That table, the needle and everything lately…

  I think I can handle it and then something hits that trigger.”

  “I was like you in school, Linda. That’s why I hired you. You’ve got a great heart for animals. Scott may be more composed, but I like your heart. The only thing I wonder about is that you seemed to have a better grip on yourself a few months ago.”

  “It’s just a freak thing. I know it’s unprofessional and I promise I’ll get controlof my emotions next time. Once again, I apologize.”

  There is still sobbing coming from Mrs. Walker in the small room.

  With permission from Dr. Matzko, Linda goes home early, eats ice cream, naps in a weird fetal position on her couch and returns several hours later for the night shift with fellow intern Scott Hornsby. When the long hours drag into the A.M., Linda pulls down her keyboard from the bird food cabinet and jams although she is never actually playing it. She always just hits the demo button and moves her fingers across the keys.

  There is a harpsichord sound she likes.

  They discuss what happened earlier that day, surrounded by medicine posters featuring Golden Retrievers.

  She finishes the story about the Walker lady.

  There is a long pause.

  They talk about Japanese ice cream.

  They talk about the problems of shooting the breeze and not learning anything.

  “I’d love to teach you something, Scott. I want you to remember something stark about life that will change you and make you less of an asshole.”

  She only used the word asshole for people she was attracted to.